Report 871
Report #871 Skillset: Planar Skill: GateMaster Org: Aeromancers Status: Completed Jun 2012 Furies' Decision: We will reduce the upkeep and increase the length of time they last. We will also allow this ability to let you see where gates lead to on survey. Problem: The active aspect of the transcendent ability in planar, GateMaster, sees little to no use. You may bond with a gate, which can only be used by you. The bonded gate will last only 90 IC days, and drains 1p from reserves every day it is bonded. Added to the 10p to weave the gate and another 10p to bond, that's a total of 110p, or 55% reserves, for a personal gate that lasts four RL days. Due to the variety of other ways one can return to a hard to reach location, and the relative uselessness of a gate only you can use, most people only trans planar to maximize the effectiveness of the child skillsets. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Replace the current functionality of GateMaster with a passive ability, similar to PlanarSight, that expands the use of other planar abilities. Suggestions can be found in the comments. 0 R: 0 Solution #2: Replace the ability to bond gates with a new type of gate (I suggest calling them wormholes) that fade after one IC day, and have a much shorter weaving time. Player Comments: ---on 6/8 @ 21:47 writes: My current ideas for effects for GateMaster (or PlanarParagon, which was suggested as a new name) are: half time to weave and unravel gates (part of the current functionality), teleport nexus off-continent or off-prime home planes (teleport Matrix only from Air and Continuum), tesseract nexus from non-home planes (tesseract to Flame on Fire from Earth/Water/Air), tesseract nexus from any Astral sphere (would put you at cosmic nexus) ---on 6/9 @ 00:23 writes: When you say 'it sees little or no use,' I have to tell you that you're wrong. I use it on a regular basis-- not necessarily for the gatebonding itself but for the speeding up of dealing with gates. I love this skill. When this is considered, I want to make sure that that part of this skill -does not change- (despite the report currently being written in such a way that it seems the whole thing is pointless). I would not mind adding in the ability to teleport nexus from off-Prime, however. ---on 6/9 @ 01:27 writes: I am in fact referring to the bonding mechanic being pointless. The solutions are in fact worded with the intention of leaving the half time to weave/unravel in place. I will update the problem to make this more clear. ---on 6/9 @ 04:31 writes: Would be nice if this ability also let you see where gates lead to. ---on 6/9 @ 16:24 writes: In my opinion, the entire gateweaving mechanic and all of its add-ons are of such limited use for the majority of players that it feels inappropriate to have them figure prominently as the top levels of a skillset at all. As such, I like the idea of GateMaster getting completly away from the gateweaving mechanic at its core, and/or introducing a better way (not just a faster way) to weave gates through it. ---on 6/10 @ 19:48 writes: Since my suggestions for Solution 1 are very city-centric, a few alterations. Instead of using tesseract nexus from a non-home plane to the home-plane of the same type (Fire to Air, Celestia to Continuum), allow it to function like a normal tesseract, between adjacent planes. This would allow commune members to tesseract to their ethereal nexus from elemental planes. ---on 6/22 @ 15:54 writes: I also agree with the comments left by Asmodea and especially Enyalida. I find myself indifferent to the solutions provided in this report, but don't have any other immediate recomendations at the moment. ---on 6/26 @ 20:13 writes: A better solution would be to make GateMastered gates function under distort. No other change would be needed then. This gives gatemaster a use, however, the only downside is that such a use would be for slightly more nefarious reasons, but it is worthwhile nonetheless